Education, Sexuality, and Marriageability: Overlapping Tropes in the Lives of Adolescent Girls in Haryana, India.

PURPOSE: Girls' education is a critical pathway to delay early marriage. We examine the symbolic and apparent value of girls' education as a transitional moment to their marriage and a de facto space to control their sexuality. METHODS: This paper draws on qualitative analysis from an impact evaluation of a Conditional Cash Transfer scheme, Apni Beti Apna Dhan (implemented between 1994-1998), designed to enhance girls' value and delay early marriage, in Haryana, India. The research was conducted in 2010-2015, using a quasi-experimental study design, with about 10,000 beneficiary and eligible nonbeneficiary girls, 18 years after the first set of beneficiaries enrolled in the Conditional Cash Transfer could encash the benefit, if they had remained unmarried. The qualitative analysis covered 124 girls and their mothers, to understand the gendered context of their lives and aspirations around education and marriage. The study was conducted by team of researchers from International Center for Research on Women, including the authors. RESULTS: Education is considered key to enhance girls' prospects for marriage. The intrinsic benefits of education may enable some girls to chart better life trajectories, though its value is largely understood within a bounded space of girls' marriageability. The persistent focus on marriage, structures girls' daily school routines bounded by strict restrictions and scrutiny around their mobility, sexuality, and conduct. CONCLUSIONS: The potential for girls to explore new freedoms and opportunities through education is curtailed by unyielding gendered restrictions and rigid social hierarchies. A nuanced understanding of educations and its role in girls' marriage is key to reshaping educational programs for girls' empowerment.

Family planning campaigns on television and contraceptive use in India.

OBJECTIVE: The paper examines the association between viewing family planning campaigns on television and being aware, improved intention to use, and current usage of modern contraceptives in India. DATA: The study uses detailed data of the currently married women from the current round of the National Family Health Survey. METHODS: We use the instrumental variable approach, propensity score matching method, besides the ordinary least square regression technique to estimate the association between viewing family planning campaigns on television and knowledge, intention to use, and current usage among the currently married women. CONCLUSION: The overall results suggest that currently married women who have seen family planning campaigns on television in the last few months are more likely to know, have a higher intention to use and use modern family planning methods. The effectiveness gets amplified when exposure to such campaigns is complemented with motivation provided by frontline health workers.

Women's empowerment and attitudes towards female genital mutilation abandonment in Nigeria: A cross-sectional analysis of the Nigeria demographic health survey.

Female genital mutilation (FGM) is a human rights violation that impacts the social, physical, psychological, sexual, and gynecological wellbeing of women and girls. Even so, FGM persists in many Nigerian communities. Using data from the 2018 Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey, we investigated the association between women's empowerment and attitudes towards FGM abandonment. A weighted logistic regression adjusting for demographic factors, contraceptive use, contraceptive decision-making power, and severity of FGM was used to assess the influence of the validated African Women's Empowerment Index-West on women's favorability to abandoning FGM as a practice. This study found that higher education level, zero acceptance of violence against women, and higher access to healthcare as indicators of empowerment were associated with support for FGM abandonment. Additional research is needed to understand further the influences on decision making and to further research the various empowerment scales and their impact on FGM abandonment.

Spatial Variation in Contraceptive Practice Across the Districts of India, 1998-2016.

India is currently one of the most demographically diverse regions of the world. Fertility and mortality rates are known to show considerable variation at the level of regions, states and districts. Little is known however, about the spatial variations of the contraceptive usage-a critical variable that is relevant to fertility as well as health policy. This paper uses data from four national population-based household surveys conducted between 1998 and 2016 to explore district-level variations in the contraceptive prevalence rate. We find no clear evidence of convergence. The gap between the best and worst performing districts is more than 70 percent across the four rounds and does not diminish over time. We also find considerable evidence of spatial clustering across districts. Districts with high prevalence concentrate in Southern states and more recently, in the Northeast of the country. Our analysis suggests that female literacy and health care infrastructure are important correlates of spatial clusters. This suggests that investments in women's human capital and health-care infrastructure play a role in expanding women's opportunities to time their births.

Poised for a dividend? Changes in the life trajectories of India's young women over the past two decades.

This paper examines recent changes in the life trajectories of Indian women. We use data from four major national population surveys that span the years 1998-2016. We look at several cohorts of women across the states and regions. We compare decisions related to education, marriage, childbearing and participation in the labor force. Though there is considerable diversity across states and regions, as well as religious groups, we find some consistent patterns that emerge everywhere. First, educational attainment and the age at marriage have been steadily increasing. Women who do not complete secondary school are more likely to marry early. Second, caste and religion (rather than education) play a significant role in decisions after marriage, such as the timing of births, the use of contraception and labor force participation. Third, women from disadvantaged communities continue to have very different life trajectories than other social groups. They are more likely to use contraception and participate in the labor force. Lower levels of schooling also appear to exacerbate the disadvantages of social identity. The pace of these changes varies sharply across states as well as regions of the country.

Is unintended birth associated with physical intimate partner violence? Evidence from India.

A growing number of studies have tested the association between intimate partner violence (IPV) and the unintendedness of pregnancy or birth, and most have suggested that unintendedness of pregnancy is a cause of IPV. However, about nine in every ten women face violence after delivering their first baby. This study examined the effects of the intendedness of births on physical IPV using data from the National Family Health Survey (2015-16). The multivariate logistic regression model analysis found that, compared with women with no unwanted births (2.9%), physical IPV was higher among those women who had unwanted births (6.9%, p<0.001), followed by those who had mistimed births (4.4 %, p<0.001), even after adjusting for several women's individual and socioeconomic characteristics. Thus, the reduction of women with mistimed and unwanted births could reduce physical IPV in India. The study highlights the unfinished agenda of family planning in the country and argues for the need to integrate family planning and Reproductive, Maternal and Child Health Care (RMNCH) services to yield multi-sectoral outcomes, including the elimination of IPV.